Related Background Art
This invention constitutes an improvement to the invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,318, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. By way of summary, the invention described in the aforementioned U.S. patent comprises a combustion chamber geometry for an internal combustion engine that produces controlled burning of fuel by prolonging the supply of air to the combustion zone over the combustion/expansion part of the engine operating cycle. Essentially, an air chamber disposed in the piston member of the engine is located adjacent the combustion chamber and communicates with the latter through a restricted passageway. The air chamber and passageway are configured to behave as a Helmholtz resonating chamber when driven by combustion vibrational wave energy during the operating cycle of the engine. The resultant resonance of the gas in the air chamber causes periodic outflow of air into the working chamber during the entire combustion process. A specific dimensional and mathematical relationship between combustion and air chamber elements was disclosed in the above-mentioned patent to permit application of the inventive concept to virtually any combustion chamber that is defined at least in part by the reciprocating piston.
The above U.S. patent furthermore describes additional background of the invention, including tracing the historical development of combustion systems using combustion wave energy to cause controlled passive pumping of air from a reservoir chamber into a combustion zone of an internal combustion engine during the combustion cycle. The invention described in the patent relies upon the provision of an air chamber adjacent the working face of the piston to provide a fixed volume reservoir for air that moves with the piston as it reciprocates within the combustion chamber. While such a fixed volume chamber contributed to the improvement of the combustion process utilizing combustion wave energy, it has been discovered by the present inventor that, under certain operating conditions and with certain engine configurations, a resonating air chamber disposed within the piston is not the optimum manner in which to utilize combustion with energy to produce rapid reaction of the fuel charge. Moreover, it has been observed that maintaining the resonating air chamber free of substantial contamination with fuel is problematic in certain engine configurations, particularly certain production engines in which it is desired to reconfigure the combustion chamber to utilize the invention disclosed in the above-mentioned U.S. patent.